Behind the Iron Curtain: Intimate Views of Life in Communist Hungary

View Slide Show13 Photographs

Credit Pool photograph by Sean Dempsey

Pictures of the Day: Thursday, July 2

By David W. DunlapJul. 2, 2009Jul. 2, 2009

Many eyes were trained Thursday on Afghanistan, where almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley. Four of the pictures chosen for this slide show — an unusual number — were taken by a single photographer, Joe Raedle, 44, who has been on the staff at Getty Images since 2000. (More of his photographs from Thursday can be seen on the Getty Web site.)

On March 23, 2003, during a bloody battle at Nasiriyah, Iraq, Mr. Raedle was hit twice in the back by flying shrapnel from an exploding mortar shell. Spared serious injury by his flak jacket, he kept on taking and transmitting pictures. He recalled young Marines crawling up to him while the firefight raged to say: “What are you doing out here? We have to be here. You don’t.” An expletive punctuated the question as originally phrased.

He told them he wanted “to show people that were unable to be there what these Marines were doing.” And in an interview a few months later, he reflected: “I was only there to document the soldiers’ lives, so I thought, ‘If I’m going to die, I might as well record what happened.'”

Such self-effacing modesty is typical of Mr. Raedle, said Pancho Bernasconi, the director of photography/news at Getty. “He’s a native of Maine, so he’s quiet,” Mr. Bernasconi said. “His pictures do his speaking for him.”

Pictures of the Day will not appear on Friday, July 3, but will resume Monday.